The 150 Attack against the Pirc does not always involve castling queenside. As mentioned by John Nunn in his "Best Games" book (which is the sequel to "Secrets of Grandmaster Play") he has two games against Gelfand and Azmaiparashvili which go 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Be3 c6 (not 4...Bg7 5. Qd2 c6 6. Bh6 +=) 5. Nf3 (5.0-0-0 b5 and White has no chance of gaining an advantage and may actually be slightly worse) b5 6. Bd3 Nbd7 7. 0-0 with a later a4. This is a more positional approach to the 150 Attack as 0-0-0 with Black being able to play b5 and a5 very quickly may be "begging the question" so to speak. 8)

Well, there isn't an easy answer - in the lines where Black plays ...c7-c6 and ...b7-b5 he quite often follows up with ...a7-a6 and ...c6-c5 so he has to play ...a6 anyway and loses a tempo with his c-pawn ...

It should perhaps also be noted that in some lines where Black has played ...c6 he holds back on ...b5 for quite a while, playing ...Nbd7 and ...Qc7 or ...Qa5 first, in order to get White to commit!

The main problem is getting the move-order right, with White retaining the option to go for f2-f3 and g2-g4, playing a quieter approach with Ng1-f3, Bf1-d3 and a2-a4 or even going for f2-f4 with a sort of Austrian Attack.

This can be very tricky to negotiate, even for experienced professionals: in "Pirc Alert" Alburt and Chernin (I am sceptical about exactly how much input Chernin had into this book) recommend that Black plays 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Be3 c6, but in the "Hybrid" Line as they call it, they recommend 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Be3 a6 - leaving c6 open for the Nb8. This is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't leave you much the wiser if White plays 4.Be3 c6 5.Nf3. Also, they recommend the following line for Black: 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.h3 0-0 6.Be3 a6 7.a4 b6 - again if White changes his move order and plays 4.Be3 c6 5.a4 then Black cannot get to this line

Do I have a solution to this? Well, if you are happy to go into a KID or an Averbakh after c2-c4, then the Modern move order is one way to go about it - this also defuses White's dangerous Bg5 lines in my view. Personally I am not so keen to do this, so I have just studied all these lines with ...c6 or ...a6 and am happy to play it either way

If sometimes we fly too close to the sun, at least this shows we are spreading our wings.

I have always wondered about the difference between 4... a6 and 4... c6. If white plays an early a4 then black will answer b4 and on Nb1/e2 there will usually follow a5 (and Ba6 later on). So black has lost a full tempo in the 4...a6-line since he has to move his a-pawn twice. The question is if the move c6 in the other variation is a gain for black or not.

Seems to me that ...Re8 is only going to make sense if Black follows up at some point with ...e5 at some point (I guess maybe ...c5, d5 e6 but W does not need to be so obliging as to play d4-d5 there). But with the rook move, f7 is going to be sensitive, so a plan involving Bf1-c4 looks like the best bet.

If sometimes we fly too close to the sun, at least this shows we are spreading our wings.

I play the 150 attack. I started to play it after getting the book Killer Opening Repertoire. The last tournament I played in, I had 2 games that went like this, 1 d4, nf6, 2 nf3, d6, 3 nc3, g6, 4 e4, bg7 5 be3, oo 6 qd2 re8. Now this was not in the book, I did score 1 and 1/2 out of the 2 games, I pretty much castled long, and played bh6 (which black played bh6), now I did not check for games on chess base yet, but I was wondering, can anyone suggest a plan.

As far as the 150 Attack goes I believe the Modern move-order goes a long way to defusing the problems of this aggressive system.

I think the best move order is certainly 1 e4 g6 2 d4 Bg7 3 Nc3 d6 4 Be3 ( probably White should go 4 Nf3! here although this does limit his options too-then Black again plays 4...a6!? ) 4...a6! and so on.There are a lot of games but Black is holding his own.